Mushkin’s Ventura Plus Review

All of the memory makers seem to have embraced the selling of flash memory devices–be they USB sticks, SSDs, SD flash for cameras, etc. Typically, USB sticks have settled on lower performance controllers with an emphasis more on sustained sequential transfer rates rather than pure performance. The Mushkin Ventura Plus has taken a step out of the norm and moved forward with a performance drive.

The slim black drive features aluminum construction, with a nice clean finish and a USB plug in and out like a stiletto knife. The drive measures 56.7 x 19.8 x 6.8mm (HWD) and weighs 0.5 ounce, and it’s small enough that it won’t crowd out neighboring USB ports or weigh down your pocket when attached to a key ring.

The drive boasts a 64GB capacity, which translates to 59.5GB of free space. With FAT32 formatting, but also comes in 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, and 128GB capacities. The Vetura Plus 64GB is available for $34.57 on Amazon.com and is compatible with both Windows (Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP) and Mac (OS X 10.5 and up).

Mushkin’s Ventura Plus is a slick-looking USB flash drive with the performance to back up its handsome exterior.

In our tests, it delivered well-above-average read speeds of 115MB per second. Average write speed was similarly impressive, at 45MB per second. Those numbers put this drive’s performance quite close to Kingston’s DataTraveler HyperX, at a price that’s about 40 percent less.

Bigger is sometimes better, and ironically, smaller can be as well. As we’ve seen today, it’s possible to have the best of both worlds: higher storage capacity in a small form factor for a flash drive. Portability and durability are two essential qualities for a flash drive, and the Mushkin Ventura Plus is very sturdy and well built. It’s also stylish, but that’s a bonus. It is very small though, arguably the smallest we’ve seen in a 64GB capacity flash drive.

Mushkin has done quite well with the Ventura Plus, successfully carrying on where the Ventura line left off. Performance, as we have spoken of many times, is excellent. Honestly, 115MB/s for a flash drive is superb at this price point, when only a handful of drives are truly capable of such speeds.